Brian Slattery Photo
“Here comes the sun!” an onlooker said. “We got the sun up.”
“We may not be responsible for getting it over the real horizon,” joked one of the members of New Haven Morris and Sword. “But we did get it over the mountains.”
An hour before the sun rose over East Rock today, the dancers and musicians of New Haven Morris and Sword gathered in Edgerton Park to celebrate May Day, as is the tradition, and usher in spring. They came with their kit (vests, bells, handkerchiefs, sticks), a small collection of instruments (fiddle and accordion), and a dozen admiring onlookers, some of whom had brought blankets to be comfortable for the occasion.
Through several dances, the members of Morris and Sword took turns dancing, playing the accompanying tunes …
… and admiring the dances while they took a brief rest.
Originally from England, morris dancing predates Shakespeare, who refers to it in one of his plays, according to Julia Friend (pictured), a member of New Haven Morris and Sword. Morris dancing found a foothold in the United States at the beginning of the 1900s, though many morris teams trace their origins to the “folk scare” of the late 1960s.
“A lot of teams around here are celebrating their 40th anniversary,” she said.
Most Morris teams have members make their own kit in order to join the team; New Haven’s team is fortunate to have among its members a seamstress who worked for the ballet.
Morris teams in the United States are loosely connected with each other, through word of mouth, through big dance events, and through umbrella organizations like the Country Dance and Song Society. But mostly, each team does its own thing. So New Haven’s team “is tiny and insular,” Friend said, “but we’re doing the same thing as other tiny, insular teams all over the United States right now. So we’re doing it together.”
For the last dance, the members of Morris and Sword invited anyone who had come to see them to join them.
“Do I have to know how to do it?” an onlooker said.
“No!” a dancer called back.
“Okay, great!” the onlooker said. She and several others rushed in to join Morris and Sword for a final dance that took them, like a chain of flowers, all around the top of the park.
New Haven Morris and Sword meets every Wednesday to practice at Center Church Parish House, 311 Temple St., and is always open to new members.